It’s been more than a month since New Jersey lawmakers tabled an effort to restrict access to public records after facing pushback from advocates for open government and press freedom. But, those advocates warn, that doesn’t mean the idea is dead.
The New Jersey chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists hosted a forum Tuesday night at Rider University that was focused on the importance of the state’s Open Public Records Act and why public records access should be preserved.
“It isn’t dead,” CJ Griffin, director of the Stein Public Interest Center, said of the derided OPRA reform bill. “They’re still working on it. They’ve made that clear.”
The move to restrict is led by Sen. Paul Sarlo (D-Bergen), who has said he believes the state’s current public records access law can be exploited by businesses, causing expensive headaches for municipal clerks. Sarlo has also said he believes there are public safety concerns with the current law.
“Some folks quite frankly, for lack of a better word, have made some really creepy, creepy requests of municipalities and cities around the state of New Jersey,” Sarlo said in March.
Micah Rasmussen, the director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University, noted that the top Republican in the state Senate, Sen. Tony Bucco (R-Morris), has signed on as a co-sponsor to the OPRA reform bill. “That’s ominous because if the Democratic caucus doesn’t have enough votes and the Republicans lend some votes, then that indicates they could pass it anyway,” Rasmussen said.
